Internal combustion (IC) engines such as gasoline engines, diesel engines, natural gas engines, and dual-fuel engines consume fossil fuels and produce an exhaust gas. The exhaust gas includes pollutants such as, for example NOx gases, particulate matter, carbon monoxide (CO), unburnt hydrocarbon among others. The exhaust gas expelled from the engine via an exhaust manifold is communicated to an aftertreatment system for removing pollutants from the exhaust gas so that the exhaust gas can meet emission requirements. In other implementations, at least a portion of the exhaust gas is also delivered to an auxiliary system, for example, an exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) system. The EGR system communicates the portion of the exhaust gas back to the engine (e.g., inserted into the engine cylinder) to reduce NOx emissions from the engine.
The joints where the exhaust manifold is fluidly coupled to the auxiliary systems are exposed to high thermal stress. Over several operation cycles, the surfaces of the joints in contact with each other can lock or freeze (e.g., due to oxidation, rusting or low temperature freezing, or interference fit due to thermal expansion), preventing or severely inhibiting the surfaces from sliding relative to each other during thermal expansion and contraction. This can cause the exhaust manifolds to crack, exhaust manifold gasket leaks and/or broken exhaust manifold bolts.